There is a whirlwind of news that we are bombarded with each day, and it can be difficult to find any grasp of what is happening in our country. There is a piece that I want to emphasize as especially important to us as engineers though: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As the head of DOGE, Elon Musk is employing an intentional strategy: choosing to have most of its members, lieutenants, and grunts be engineers, especially young engineers. As young engineers ourselves, I ask everyone to reflect on why that is.
My theory is this: as engineers, we’re trained to dive headfirst into things we don’t know about and work our way out to understand, change, and optimize. Yet we are primarily—if not solely—trained to see through a technical lens. I see it manifest in countless ways in myself and at Olin. There’s a problem: Let me try to fix it! Something is inefficient: Let me optimize it! Build this thing: Learn enough about it to experiment with! There’s a constant desire to dive right into solving the problem before we step back and look at the pool: is it worth diving in? And how far might our ripples flow? It limits our awareness of the world and our perception of the impact we have on it. I reflect on CD, the class that encourages us most to engage with non-technical concepts of impact. For all of the care and understanding we were taught to search for, how many concluded that society itself had a fundamental necessity for change? Our designs were limited by the implicit conception of what we could offer as engineers—what products we could create within established systems, not what larger change or impact we could dwell upon. And CD is the core class that most centers a non-technical impact approach to our education! Our other engineering experiences are about finely polishing our technical lenses. Any larger evaluation of non-technical impacts are briefly tacked onto a class or two, if addressed at all. Intentional or not, and no matter what values we state, those experiences train us to not dwell long upon the larger societal impact of our work.
Many DOGE engineers did not shape their lives around the larger societal impact they would have, but on doing the technical work that was best for themselves. I know this because they didn’t go to create non-profits or change policy or improve public interest technologies after college. They went to study engineering, then they went to intern or work at Tesla and SpaceX, likely because it would pay them the most or give them the best technical experience or was simply just cool engineering work. They shaped their lives around honing their technical, problem-solving abilities, then choosing the work that was most personally profitable. When they were offered a spot in DOGE, it made sense economically to bind themselves to Musk and if nothing else, they got a new exciting optimization problem: the government.
In the face of a dauntingly complex and competitive world, we all have been conditioned to look after ourselves: it is the very foundation of our economic system. Especially as engineers, we’re told, implicitly or explicitly, that we are justified in finding what will be the most profitable for us, the impact is for others to decide. I understand there are financial realities, and I acknowledge that I speak from a place of privilege, but an awareness of impact is something that constitutes the very foundation of what makes any person a responsible member of society—a respect and acknowledgement that your choices will unavoidably impact others. In the absence of that awareness of broader perspectives arises an absence of empathy, humility, and understanding.
And that is why I am afraid of DOGE.
The invocation of Nazism is a heavy, overused trope which risks diminishing its true horror. But in observing DOGE, I see a clear parallel of how engineers become the mechanisms of hate, of how an indifferent and banal evil arises when technical education is divorced from broader perspectives.
The parallel is of Albert Speer.1 Young and ambitious, he graduated in architecture from the Technical University of Berlin but lacked any real political fervor. He aligned himself with the Nazi Party in the 30’s largely because their promise to reinvent German culture would afford him more opportunities to do the grand architecture he envisioned creating. By 1933, he was lucratively involved in designing pageantry and building plans, and when war broke out, Speer was chosen as the Minister of Armaments and War Production. In 1943, the London Observer examined him:
“Speer is, in a sense, more important for Germany today than Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels or the generals. Speer is not one of the flamboyant and picturesque Nazis. Whether he has any other than conventional political opinions is unknown. He might have joined any other political party that gave him a job and a career. He is very much the average man, well dressed, civil, non-corrupt, very middle class in his style of life, with a wife and six children. Much less than any of the other German leaders does he stand for anything particularly German or particularly Nazi. He rather symbolizes a type which has become increasingly important in all belligerent countries; the pure technician, the classless, bright young man, without background, with no other original aim than to make his way in the world, and no other means than his technical and managerial ability. It is the lack of psychological and spiritual balast and the ease with which he handles the terrifying technical and organizational machinery of our age which makes this slight type go extremely far nowadays … This is their age; the Hitlers and the Himmlers we may get rid of, but the Speers, whatever happens to this particular man, will be long with us.”
This quote serves as a constant, shuddering reminder of what a technical education can mean, and is what we have a responsibility to reckon with as engineers. The employment of technically focused, ambitious youth is the strategy that Elon Musk and the Trump Administration are employing with DOGE members. They were given a directive to make huge cuts, to root out DEI, and to report back. They excel at it. This is not a random coincidence, but an intentional tactic. We’ve seen it used before, and we have to ask ourselves what we must do as we see it now.
I am not saying to eschew engineering as an evil, but know that engineers who do not actively grapple with and work to change their impact are engineers that function as tools, and there will always be those that will seek to use us as such. This can be for good, sure, but more often it is used for extraction, exploitation, and oppression. No movement, no organization, no company, and no regime is possible without the support or, more pertinently, the complicity of its engineers.
We cannot run behind the justification of a non-partisan and impartial self-interest. We cannot hide behind the thought that someone else would do it anyways. We more than anyone have an obligation to systems-level understanding, knowing what we are building and for whom we are building it. Creating an electric car to learn in college is different from creating an electric car that profits a white supremacist. Optimizing a drone to evaluate infrastructure health is different from optimizing a drone that is going to be used for urban warfare. Building trains is different if you know what, or who, those trains will hold. Your work will not result in the creation of apolitical technologies—it will be placed in the hands of people and organizations that will seek to use them for their own purposes.
I do not say this to exclude any companies from your job search, but none of us are exempt from confronting the deeper impacts of the work that we do, because that is how we are used. If you plan to work for an organization that you know is not doing good, then actively reflect on the power that you have to change that work from within and strive to do so. Theories of change differ from outside change to inside change and from issue to issue, but no matter what your theory is, you cannot bury your head from your impact for your own self interest. Complicity is exactly what they desire of you.
When I look at DOGE, I don’t see a group of conniving masterminds. I see a group of engineers who I am familiar with: who when they get their directive, see it only as the problem they’ve been given. And the tool gets to work.
The reason I am afraid of DOGE is not because it is a group of intentionally evil or malicious people, it’s because I see a clear parallel to the worst of history: a clear warning of how technically focused, ambitious people are used. It reminds me of lessons from the past, and it gives me shudders of the future.
I am afraid of DOGE because it is a group of people that I know well, and who have been trained in the same way that I have been. I am afraid because they demonstrate clearly what can happen if I stop striving to grapple with the complexity of the world and the impact that I am having on it. I urge you to heed the same warning.
Summarizing a person’s life and motivations is hard to do briefly. I do not claim this is a definitive account of Albert Speer, but is what I have found as the impression from the account of a Nuremberg Prosecutor (King) who wrote a book on him and the below quote, as well as other online sources. ↩︎
To the person who wrote “I Have F***ing Had It With This College’s Leadership”,
You should join an organized activist group on campus.
Last month’s headlining story, reflected a sentiment that many of us have had at one point or another: Olin’s administration is prioritizing making money over student, faculty, and staff voices and values. This piece is not to debate the validity of the sentiment, nor to try to point to where it stems from. For now, I will leave those discussions to your personal experiences, thoughts, conversations, and opinions. This piece is not just addressed to the person who wrote last month’s article; it is written to anyone who has passionately disapproved of a decision that has been made at Olin, to anyone who has been subject to a change outside of their control, and to anyone who has tried making change within the school. It is written with the intent of providing some advice on how to channel whatever anger, tiredness, disillusionment, jadedness, sadness, or whatever other emotion has come out of it. So, with that established:
To the person who wrote last month’s article,
You should join an organized activist group on campus, and I will offer to you Olin Climate Justice. Let me expound. I know what you’re feeling and I’ve been there before. You came here expecting to be able to make change, to be able to have autonomy in shaping your experience at Olin. Heck, it might be the reason you came to Olin in the first place; we certainly market ourselves as a co-creation paradise. But when you got here, it seemed like that was false advertising, that the only control students have is performative at best because everything you try to do fails or falls upon deaf ears. Now I want to be fully clear: that anger comes from a power dynamic that exists between administration and the rest of the college. You’re feeling powerless because, as a single person, you have no formal power to make change, especially in contrast to the few at the top that make the final decision. Even as you talk with peers that are feeling the same thing, what can you do? I have been in this situation, and it makes you feel alone and powerless against a system that you can’t change.
And that is why I encourage you to join an activist organization. The goal of activism is to gather these voices and more importantly, to organize them. In organizing, you combine the experience and knowledge of others. Many voices are taken and empowered to speak out as one. Making change gets complicated fast. Thinking about what change needs to be made is the easy first step, but thinking about the strategy, goals, methods, motivations, and everything else involved in making that change will quickly become incredibly daunting. You need more knowledge. You need more time. Most importantly, you need more support. Luckily, it exists.
You need more knowledge. Decades of activist philosophy and learning have been compiled specifically for higher education institutions within the United States. They include what has worked, what hasn’t, what strategies exist and how to use them, and everything else about structuring and organizing. It has all been picked apart and put together. It has been tried and refined. And it has been documented so that the rest of us can learn and think and act with them. Even at Olin, OCJ has in-depth resources and documentation of activist movements going back to 2016, along with alumni contacts. Since we began as an organization in 2022, we have intentionally noted changemaking strategies, processes of decision-making, and reflections on actions and their impacts. We have made changes to our structure and strategies as we’ve learned. We have noted what hasn’t worked, and more importantly, what has. This knowledge exists in countless documents and in the memories of leads of any activist organization; go ask them for it. You don’t have to figure it all out yourself.
You need more time. An activist group distributes the work of organizing and running a campaign, allowing people to utilize their strengths and not have to take on everything at once. Organizing takes work. Strategizing, drafting arguments, researching, attending meetings, and a thousand other things need to be done for a well-run campaign. The amount of time that it would take one person to do all of this – especially at the college that studies the most – would be nearly impossible. A campaign needs a graphic designer just as much as it needs a legal researcher. This division of effort means that a changemaking effort isn’t dependent on one person, but can be worked on by many at a time. You don’t have to do all the work yourself.
And you need more support. Challenging any power structure alone is terrifying. There is uncertainty. There is loneliness. Prominently, there is risk and its associated fear. You don’t know how your friends or community will react – if you will be ridiculed or ostracized – which leads to hesitation in expressing yourself. You don’t know if there will be formal retaliation in the power structure, leaving you isolated or even exiled from your community. You know so little about so much that could happen, and it feels like there is no safe place to express yourself. And while I hope you can find trust and confidence in your friends, almost all activist organizations will serve as this safe space. Organizing is stressful and emotionally draining. Trust me, I understand this. It is essential to the functioning of an activist group to be a safe place – there needs to be a solidarity that is only built with trust. These places are intentionally created. We understand that while it’s useful for knowledge to be shared and work to be delegated, it is necessary for the team to trust itself and be comfortable with each other. But you don’t have to be by yourself through it.
I find that we’re often tempted at Olin to fall into a “do it yourself” mentality – a mentality that we should have the spunk to be able to look at any problem and find its solution. But speaking from experience, that will only serve to burn you. Any community problem is incredibly complex. When it comes to making a change, you need to remember: you don’t have to figure it all out yourself, you don’t have to do all the work yourself, and most importantly, you don’t have to be by yourself through it.
I want to end by quoting something in your piece: “Maybe they came with some grand ideas of how to change this place for the better, and found out that real change is hard.” Reflecting on myself, I know that this is true. I came here with grand illusions of how easy it would be to make large-scale change and shape my community for the better. My rose-tinted lenses were promptly smashed off my face as I was repeatedly punched over and over again. It hurt. And while I can’t speak for the experience of others, you may be right, maybe the administration also had this experience. Maybe you did as well.
I don’t want anyone to have to go through that experience. I see the cure to it lying in more knowledge, time, and support. I humbly offer OCJ as a place that can hopefully fill those three in some capacity, but it doesn’t have to be us. There are plenty of other resources and people, on and off campus, trying to create change in a way that is informed by activist methodology and strategy. I mention OCJ because we are the only officially established activist organization on campus (so we get better snacks off that sweet CCO budget), but you have other options. You can take a Wellesley course on activism (shoutout to Laura Grattan)! You can get involved in an organization in Boston! You can find cool people and events to reach out and go to! And you can do umpteen other different things! (Although I will also mention that OCJ always starts our meetings with a share out on some aspect of activism and an exercise that teaches some organizing skill, typically unrelated to climate justice. If you want to just show up for the start, you’re welcome to do that as well!)
Changemaking is hard, and no one should have to do it alone. Find a place where you will have years of knowledge backing you. Where you will have the time and effort of others aiding you. And where you will have the support to be able to get through the rough days. We have a stronger voice together, and that’s what organizing is fundamentally about.
Find a place where your frustrations of powerlessness can be channeled into forces of power.
In solidarity,
Ike
And just to complete the shameless plug: OCJ meets in the PARC 6:30 – 8 every Tuesday. All are welcome :)